The Top Nine is a king-of-the-hill tournament: each iteration contains only the best nine robots from the previous tournament, plus one challenger. This concentrates the good sides, and shows how a side performs against good opponents, rather than how well they can eat helpless targets.

The tournaments are run in a standard 10x10 world with ten sides for at least 200 (previously 100) rounds. There are considerable variations in the results, which could mean 100 rounds is not enough. This could also be due to effects sides have on each other - with only ten sides, replacing one can substantially affect the others. So don't take the results too seriously.

Survival increased rapidly as bad sides were removed, and has usually been 30-35%.

Some results

If you can't beat them, join them

(7 August 2012) Active deals with the Massive Beast derivatives by dodging their shots. Big Bertha copies their distasteful strategy of seeding with a large long-range fighter, and dramatically improves on Active's performance. I'll miss Cyclops, though.

Finally!

(5 January 2008) Finally, the last of the original sides is gone: no more Commune! Well, no more two versions of Commune, anyway - Commune Plus is still around.

Side

Author

Score

Nonsterilesurvival

Earlydeath

Latedeath

Earlyscore

Fraction

Kills

Move Zig! 3

ziggystar

18.3%

38%

32%

43%

9.0%

47%

13%

Revenge Killer 3

Warren

16.0%

34%

21%

57%

15.6%

45%

13%

Cyclops

Warren

13.1%

48%

20%

41%

15.1%

28%

11%

Segregated Eaters 3

Matt Burkholder

11.1%

25%

38%

59%

7.1%

39%

13%

Unproductive 2

Devon

9.2%

32%

28%

55%

11.1%

28%

13%

Shield + Cowards 2f

Alexander (aka nfwu)

9.1%

29%

60%

27%

5.2%

31%

4%

Walled City 2

Warren

8.5%

25%

38%

60%

10.0%

32%

12%

Commune + 2

Devon/Warren

7.1%

18%

49%

66%

8.2%

38%

8%

Weird Men C

Matt Burkholder

5.3%

26%

26%

65%

10.3%

18%

9%

Commune 10

Devon

2.4%

10%

44%

83%

8.5%

23%

5%

Overall:

29%

36%

56%

Weird

(30 December 2006) 300 rounds (why not?). Survival is still falling. Especially Productive Plus' - it suffers greatly from sharing the corners with three other sides.

Side

Author

Score

Nonsterilesurvival

Earlydeath

Latedeath

Earlyscore

Fraction

Kills

Segregated Eaters 2

Matt Burkholder

24.9%

50%

20%

37%

10.8%

48%

20%

Move Zig! 3

ziggystar

22.7%

51%

23%

34%

13.0%

44%

15%

Shield + Cowards 2f

Alexander

11.0%

34%

47%

36%

7.4%

32%

6%

Walled City 2

Warren

10.5%

29%

33%

57%

11.9%

35%

13%

Unproductive 2

Devon

8.1%

27%

22%

65%

12.0%

27%

13%

Weird Men C

Matt Burkholder

5.9%

28%

23%

63%

11.2%

20%

10%

Commune + 2

Devon/Warren

5.8%

14%

37%

77%

10.1%

38%

7%

Commune 10

Devon

4.5%

15%

41%

75%

9.8%

27%

6%

Business Cycle 7

Matt Burkholder

3.4%

16%

46%

70%

9.5%

18%

8%

Productive Plus 4

DvF and Devon

3.1%

9%

77%

61%

4.2%

34%

3%

Overall:

27%

37%

57%

Narrowing

(4 June 2006) Notice how much closer the scores have become. This is partly due to an increase in fortification, so Segregated Eaters no longer does so well. I don't understand the drop in survival. 150 rounds, so errors are 2.4%-4.5% - comparable to the differences between scores.

Segregated Eaters' score is not survival * fraction because fraction counts sterile survival, which happens fairly often for this side. The identical death rates for Walled City and Segregated Eaters are a coincidence, not a mistranscription.

History

(11 April 2006 - wow, I haven't updated this for two years) Weakening forcefields has, predictably, hurt all their users. Shepherds has fallen off the top 10. Here are the results in graph form:

This doesn't tell the whole story, because currently graphs count all scores after elimination as zero. So sides like Segregated Eaters, which often wins by elimination, don't look very good in the graph. Also, this is a graph of biomass, not biomass fraction, so sides which get a high fraction by killing rather than growth don't look good. The top line in the graph above is Commune Plus 2, because it grows large. Segregated Eaters took first place by fraction, but is one of the lowest lines on the graph.

Back in business

(21 April 2004) The new version of Business Cycle, in addition to being fun to watch, kicked off Gunner. Yay.